18 September
2013:ECEN
5634students
in the Thursday lab section (022) will make up their labs
missed due to the floods on September 12 as follows: "A"
groups will make up lab L1 from 12:30-3:00 on Thursday
September 19; the "B" group will make up lab L2 from
12:00-2:30 on Thursday September 19. As always, prelab
homework is due at the beginning of the lab, but see
either of us if your circumstances necessitate an
extension.

15 September 2013:Due
to the extensive nature of the flood closures, lab reports for the
experiments that were carried out on Tuesday September 10 will now
be due on Thursday September 19, and can be turned in during the
9:00 lab section.

12
September 2013:Because
of
today's campus closure, there will be no lab section meeting at
9:00 today, Arrangements will be made for students in today's
section to make up the experiments scheduled for today at a later
date. Lab reports for the experiments that were carried out on
Tuesday September 10 will now be due on Monday September 16, to be
turned in at lecture.

10
September 2013:Please
note that beginning on September 24, there will be changes to the
membership of a few of the lab groups. Please
check Lab Group Assignments
to see if your lab group will be changed.

Notes:In this course, you will
study microwave transmission-line, waveguide and antenna
structures from the experimental point of view. In the process,
you will also become familiar with some of the instruments that
permit accurate microwave measurements to be made. No text is
used; course notes (including the experiments) are available in
PDF form for download here.
You must use the username

ecen_4634

and the password given out
in class. The file can be read and printed using the free
Adobe Acrobat Reader
software. Use only the 2013 version of the
notes, and not earlier ones.

Software: For many of the
homework problems and lab write-ups, you will need access to a
microwave/RF circuit analysis program. The preferred tool for
this class is an industry-standard microwave circuit simulator
tool from Applied Wave Research (AWR): Microwave Office. AWR has generously allowed our class to
obtain free licenses for their CAD tool Microwave Office.
Please follow the instructions below to obtain a license for
your computer:

If for some reason you have
previously already registered on the AWR website, you will
use the same account to get the software.

If you have not previously
registered, the license generation will send you an email
with the account login information.

You
will
then obtain a license file with a link to the software
download area.

If you are asked for a
faculty contact name, use "Prof. Zoya Popović". It is probably
best if you download from an on-campus location, or use a VPN.
The domain "colorado.edu" is added to the system so you should
not have any problems, but please let me know as soon as
possible if you have trouble downloading the software. The AWR
software runs on the Windows OS. If you run another OS, you will
have to run it in a virtual machine. I use Linux (Ubuntu), and
can successfully run AWR under Virtualbox, and I have reports
that it has successfully been run on a Mac using VMware. I have
posted the slides from a tutorial on
the use of the AWR software that was given as a short
course here at CU a few years ago. If you follow along with
their examples, you should get a good feel for the software
fairly quickly. Not all of these are needed for this course (in
fact the last one is more of an advertisement than anything
else), but the first several sets should be useful to you.

AWR, Ansoft Designer and
other EM/RF/microwave software have been installed on four
computers in the outer lab (room ECEE 254) for use by students
in this course. These computers are shared with other classes
(e. g., ECEN 5134), and in addition to the TA office hours,
other classes may also use this room for a few hours each week
for various purposes. To start with, use of these computers will
be on a first-come, first-served basis, and you may not leave a
computer running your program without being present yourself. I
hope that self-policing of this policy will work well for
everyone. If it does not, I may have to revise it later on.

You may also need access to
a version of the SPICE circuit analysis program in order to work
one or two of the homework problems. Any version is okay, so
long as it supports transmission line sections as circuit
elements, as well as nonlinear voltage-controlled current
sources. Several free versions of SPICE can be found on the
Internet. If your version of a particular program does not have
its own suitable plotting capability (or if you need to plot
versus a variable other than frequency or time), you will have
to prepare plots using other software (such as Excel, Gnuplot,
Matlab, etc.) which you are going to need anyway for other parts
of your lab reports and homework. See Appendix D of the course
notes for some tips on the usage of SPICE particularly relevant
to this course. Programs in all these categories, and more, can
be found at the software links below.

ECEN 5634 students will
also need some kind of mathematical numerical analysis software
capable of solving matrix equations in more than one unknown (i.
e., solving linear systems of equations). Examples of such
software are: Mathcad, Matlab, Mathematica, Excel (with the
Solver add-in), Euler
, Scilab , XLPlot , etc.
I don't care which you use, but you will need to be reasonably
self-reliant in its usage, because I am not expert in all such
programs.

Lab Rules:The computer room (ECEE 254)
and lab room (ECEE 254A) are both used for this class.As students in this class, you will be granted access
only to ECEE 254 during the semester via your BuffOne cards.
Here are the rules for using this room; access rights may be
terminated if you are found in violation of them:

Doors to this room are to remain closed except
during class times, TA office hours or other class-related
activities.

If you are the last one to leave, you must make
sure all lights are turned off, and the door securely closed
(you may have to push it closed---air flow from the
heating/cooling system sometimes prevents it from closing on
its own).

Do not let anyone else into the room on your card
access. If others are entitled to use the room, they must
enter using their own BuffOne card.

If another class
activity is taking place (a help/recitation session, for
example), please try not to disrupt that activity. It may be
that you will not be able to use a computer at all while
this activity is going on, and must wait until it is over to
do so.

The laboratory room, ECEE
254A, that we use for this course differs from lab rooms you may
have used in other courses.It isNOTan open laboratory.Your BuffOne card does not provide you
access to this room, which will only be available for running
the lab experiments during designated lab section times. Please
read and understand the lab
rules. You are responsible for the proper use of the
facilities.

Further
Reading:If you are curious to learn more about RF and microwave
measurements, the following books have been put on reserve at
the Engineering, Mathematics and Physics Library:

Course
Organization: There will be 11 experiments
this semester. You must complete all of these to pass the
course. If, with serious reason (medical emergencies qualify,
workload from other courses does not) you miss one experiment,
there will be make-up labs scheduled near the end of the
semester. You must inform me ahead of time if you are going to
miss a lab. If you arrive more than 15 minutes late for your lab
section, you will not be allowed to do the lab, and will
have to make it up during one of the make-up weeks.

Homework (the "pre-lab") is assigned for each
experiment, and is due at the beginning of your lab section each
week. Be sure to do the homework appropriate to the lab that
your group will be doing each week. See the Prelab Homework Schedule below to
determine which assignments you are responsible for.Students will not be allowed
to do the lab work (and hence will not get credit for
that week's experiment) unless their pre-labs have been handed
in at the beginning of the lab session. The purpose of the homework is
to allow you to perform the experiments with some background and
insight, rather than by the seat of your pants.

You should also read the assigned sections of the course
notes prior to each week's lecture. There is a very limited
amount of lecture time available for the many topics we cover in
this course, so the lectures cannot go into each one in as much
detail as we might wish. Also, some of the material should be a
review for you from your previous EM Fields courses. I expect
that you will read the notes and review basic EM concepts as
needed in order to keep up; I will always be glad to help you
with any questions you may have during my office hours since
there will not be time for long answers during the lectures.
Please feel free to come in for help.

Lab reports are due in
lecture the Monday after your lab. Although you carry out the
lab experiments in groups of two or three students, everyone
must turn in their own individual lab report that shows your own
understanding of the material. Only the data you took should be
the same among reports from the same lab group. These write-ups
are the only basis for determining your grade for each lab.
Grading of pre-labs and lab reports is as follows:

10 --- complete and all correct

8-9 --- complete and mostly correct

5-7 --- complete but some errors

3-4 --- complete but mostly wrong

0-2 --- incomplete or
wrong

Please follow this guide
to writing good lab reports when you write up your labs.
You may discuss your labs with anyone you wish, but you must
write up your lab reports and pre-labs yourself. Copying
homework or lab reports from someone else (including your lab
partners) or letting someone else copy from you is academic
dishonesty, and will constitute grounds for failing the
class. Please read the information on
disabilities, religious observances, standards of behavior and
academic integrity.

The final exam for this
course is given on Monday December 16, 2013 from 7:30-10:00 AM in room
ECEE 1B32.

FCQs (Faculty Course
Questionnaires) are administered online. You should be receiving
an email late in the semester with instructions on how to fill
out the online form. Information obtained via this questionnaire
is very helpful in determining future improvements to the
course, so please take the time to complete the form.

The schedule of experiments
is posted below. Each group of lab partners will either be in an
A Group or a B Group---this will be decided in class when lab
partners are chosen. You should follow the schedule as posted,
making sure to hand in solutions for the appropriate prelab
homeworks (see prelab schedule
).

Lab Group
Assignments

Prepare for the experiments
each week according to the schedule indicated. Note: if the
schedule says "no expt", it means there is no experiment that
week, but the lab section will be used for a lecture period, and
you should attend. If the schedule says "No Lab", that means you
do not have to attend the lab section that week.

Section

Lab
Group

Group
Members (9/10-9/19)

Group
Members (9/24 and after)

ECEN 4634-021

(A)

Bluem, Reiersen, Wenrick

Bluem,
Reiersen, Wenrick

ECEN 4634-021

(A)

Glass, Grimes

Glass, Grimes

ECEN 4634-021

(B)

Pummell, Schilling, Zhong

Pummell,
Schilling, Zhong

ECEN 4634-021

(B)

Cooke, Prevacek

Cooke,
Prevacek

ECEN 5634-021

(A)

Deodhar, Sonawane, Ursekar

Deodhar,
Sonawane, Ursekar

ECEN 5634-021

(B)

Dai, Pradhan

Dai, Pradhan,
Shrestha

ECEN 5634-021

(B)

Brukwinski, Garrido Lopez,
Stephens

Brukwinski,
Garrido Lopez, Stephens

ECEN 5634-022

(A)

Gunn, Joshi

Bangalore Radhakrishna, Gunn,
Joshi

ECEN 5634-022

(A)

Bangalore Radhakrishna,
Shrestha

−

ECEN 5634-022

(B)

DeVito, Thompson, Zhang

DeVito,
Thompson, Zhang

Lab Schedule
Please read the experiment description BEFORE you come to lab
each week.

Dates

ECEN
4634
A Group Labs

ECEN 4634B
Group Labs

ECEN 5634A
Group Labs

ECEN 5634B
Group Labs

August 27/29

Lab
introduction/lecture (no expt)

Lab
introduction/lecture (no expt)

Lab
introduction/lecture (no expt)

Lab
introduction/lecture (no expt)

September 3/5

Lab lecture (no
expt)

Lab lecture (no
expt)

Lab lecture (no
expt)

Lab lecture (no
expt)

September 10/12

Experiment L1

Experiment L2

Experiment L1

Experiment L2

September 17/19

Experiment L2

Experiment L1

Experiment L2

Experiment L1

September 24/26

Experiment L4

Experiment L3

Experiment L4

Experiment L3

October 1/3

Experiment L3

Experiment L4

Experiment L3

Experiment L4

October 8/10

Experiment L5

Experiment L7

Experiment L6

Experiment L7

October 15/17

Experiment L7

Experiment L5

Experiment L7

Experiment L6

October
22/24

No
Lab

No
Lab

No
Lab

No
Lab

October
29/31

Experiment
L9

Experiment
L8

Experiment
L9

Experiment
L8

November 5/7

Experiment L8

Experiment L9

Experiment L8

Experiment L9

November 12/14

Experiment L10

Experiment L11

Experiment L10

Experiment L11

November 19/21

Experiment L11

Experiment L10

Experiment L11

Experiment L10

December 3/5

Experiment L12

Experiment L12

Experiment L12

Experiment L12

December 10/12

Lab finals

Lab finals

Lab finals

Lab finals

Prelab Homework Schedule

You must turn in your prelab
homework problems at the beginning of the lab section each
week.
Note that Prelab "0"is to be turned in at the beginning of your
lab section during the week of September 3, even though you will
not be doing an experiment that week.
Grad students should do the "Additional Homework" assignment as
well as the "Prelab Homework".NOTE: Please use AWR Microwave Office (preferred) or
Ansoft Designer for all problems that require the use of
software, unless only SPICE will work.

G1: Do a literature search for articles, books or
application notes dealing with the effect of surface
roughness on the walls of a waveguide on propagation and
attenuation in that waveguide. Summarize your findings in no
more than one page.

Undergraduate vs. Graduate Course
Requirements: Undergraduate (ECEN 4634)
students do 11 labs and prelabs (including lab L5 but not lab
L6). Graduate (ECEN 5634) students do the same labs and
prelabs (but including lab L6 instead of lab L5), as well as
some additional homework problems. The exams will also contain
extra problems for the graduate students. In addition,
graduate students will write a term paper on a topic related
to RF and microwave measurements. Graduate students are
expected to work more independently during the lab sections.
Grades for the course will be determined as follows:

Course

Undergraduate
(ECEN 4634)

Graduate
(ECEN 5634)

Homework and
Prelabs

20%

20%

Lab Write-ups

25%

20%

Midterm Exam
(written)

20%

15%

Term paper

NA

10%

Final Exam (lab
portion)

15%

15%

Final Exam
(written portion: covers the entire course)

20%

20%

The TA will
grade the labs and prelabs; we will
grade the exams.We and the TA will be available for
questions regarding any aspect of the course during our
respective office hours, which we hope will be such that
everyone in the course can make use of at least some of them. In
any case, you can also see us by appointment at other times,
subject to our availability.

Term papers (ECEN
5634 only):Graduate students must each write a term paper on some
topic related to RF or microwave measurements. The paper should
be written in either MSWord or LaTeX, in IEEE publication
format. You should provide your paper electronically to me via
email as either a .DOC, .DOCX or .PDF file. Here is a sample
file (warts and all) so you can learn the correct format
for an engineering technical paper, but keep in mind that this
sample is a description of a project (including design,
fabrication and measurements) rather than a term paper (which
should be a summary of technical literature that you have read
about a particular topic). I do not preclude your doing
experimental work in connection with this term paper, but this
is not required and its presence or absence will not affect your
grade on this term paper. The paper should be at least 4 pages,
but no more than 10 pages in length, with 6-7 pages as the most
desirable length. The term papers are due no later than 5:00 PM
Friday, December 13, 2013.

Each student will take the lab portion of the
final exam in room ECEE 254A during the 30 minute time period
listed in the table below.You will also be allowed an extra 15 minutes
after the measurements are complete to write up your results and finish any computations that are needed. The exam will consist of two measurements and
some questions about each one.
Please show up promptly, since you only have your designated
half hour during which to complete the measurements
portion of this exam.

Free from Hewlett-Packard. Their Website
description: "AppCADis an easy-to-use program
that provides you with a unique suite of RF design tools and
computerized Application Notes to make your wireless design
job faster and easier.AppCAD's unique, interactive approach makes engineering
calculations quick and easy for many RF, microwave, and
wireless applications.AppCADis useful for the design and analysis of many
circuits, signals, and systems using products from discrete
transistors and diodes to Silicon and GaAs integrated
circuits. The keyword forAppCADiseasy- no circuit files, no manuals
- just quick and easy." It is still available, although no
longer supported.

Free Windows high performance SPICE
simulator, schematic capture and waveform viewer. Primarily
intended for applications using the company's switching
regulators, it is a very good general-purpose SPICE program,
including transmission-line circuit elements.

Puff
is an MS-DOS program for computer aided design and analysis
of RF circuits. It was originally developed at California
Institute of Technology (Caltech) by the research group of
Prof. David Rutledge. You can freely download a copy of this
program without a manual. More information is available at the
Caltech website.

Quite Universal
Circuit Simulator; an open source circuit
simulator with graphical user interface (GUI). The
GUI is based on Qt® by Trolltech®. The software
aims to support all kinds of circuit simulation
types, e.g. DC, AC, S-parameter, Harmonic Balance
analysis, noise analysis, etc. It is available
natively for GNU/Linux, but is also ported to many
other platforms: MacOS, Windows, Solaris,
NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc. Long-term ambitions are
grand, but even now it has quite respectable
capabilities, including native support for
microstrip and coplanar waveguide and some of
their junctions and other discontinuities.
Documentation is not quite as complete as could be
desired at this stage, however.

From their website:
"Transmission lines, including directional couplers, of
arbitrary cross section and an arbitrary number of dielectrics
can be analysed with atlc. The impedance Z0
of a two-conductor transmission line, as well as the odd-mode,
even-mode, differential mode and common mode impedances of a
directional coupler can all be computed with atlc. Tools to both
analyse and synthesise directional couplers are available." atlc
is primarily a UNIX or linux program, but ports to many other
OSs have been made.

Presents two useful Windows software
programs for microwave and RF modeling. Windows FDTD 1.10
Software is Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) software by F.
Kung for printed circuit board (PCB) modeling. "This software
can model propagation of electromagnetic wave in a
three-dimensional PCB structure, with lump components such as
resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and bipolar junction
transistors. Sinusoidal and pulse voltage sources model are also
included. The software runs on Windows platform (Win95 and
above), and requires minimum 64 MByte RAM. Included with this
version are utilities to view the output data and to draw the
model." Windows Smith Chart/Impedance Matching Tool (1.15) is a
simple and intuitive tool for viewing an impedance value in
Smith chart. "The latest version also allows the user to perform
L, T, Pi and single stub transmission line network interactive
impedance matching/transformation. It is a versatile tool, which
can be used to teach engineers and students on transmission line
and impedance matching theory."

Freeware Windows software for the
solution of Maxwell's equations and extraction of circuit
parasites (inductance and capacitance), thanks to which
equivalent circuits can be derived for simulation of EM behavior
of a 3D structure with SPICE-like simulators. Common usages
include the analysis of connectors, strip lines, IC packages,
ram cells, etc.

Freeware. From the reference manual:
"FEMM is a suite of programs for solving low frequency
electromagnetic problems on two-dimensional planar and
axisymmetric domains. The program currently addresses
linear/nonlinear magnetostatic problems, linear/nonlinear time
harmonic magnetic problems, and linear electrostatic problems."
FEMM is a Windows program, useful for getting numerical
solutions of fields and line parameters for TEM and quasi-TEM
modes on transmission lines, among many possible applications.

TX-Line is a free, easy-to-use,
Windows-based interactive transmission line calculator from AWR.
It can be used for the analysis and synthesis of transmission
line structures. TX-Line enables users to enter either physical
characteristics or electrical characteristics for common
transmission media such as: microstrip, stripline, coplanar
waveguide, grounded coplanar WG and slotline. TX-Line has an
easy-to-use interactive graphical user interface and runs on
Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/etc.

A freeware numerical mathematics program
similar in many ways to Matlab. It is available for Windows,
Linux, Unix and OS/2 (this latter is no longer maintained). May
be worth a look, though I haven't really used it myself.

A portable command-line driven
interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM
OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari (!) and many other
platforms. The software is copyrighted but freely distributed
(i. e., you don't have to pay for it). It was originally
intended as to allow scientists and students to visualize
mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well,
but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including
web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for
third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot supports many
types of plots in either 2D and 3D. It can draw using lines,
points, boxes, contours, vector fields, surfaces, and various
associated text. It also supports various specialized plot
types. Gnuplot supports many different types of output:
interactive screen terminals (with mouse and hotkey
functionality), direct output to pen plotters or modern printers
(including postscript and many color devices), and output to
many types of file (eps, fig, jpeg, LaTeX, metafont, pbm, pdf,
png, postscript, svg, ...).

A free
mathematical software package for various Unix flavors and for
Windows, somewhat more advanced in capabilities thanEuler.From its website: "Scilab is a
scientific software package for numerical computations in a
user-friendly environment. It features:

"This open source, digitizing software
converts an image file showing a graph or map, into numbers. The
image file can come from a scanner, digital camera or
screenshot. The numbers can be read on the screen, and written
or copied to a spreadsheet." Very handy for comparing your own
calculations with those someone else has previously published
only in the form of a graph.

Windows Freeware. From the website:
"XLPlot is a program to create graphs for MS-Windows 98, 2000,
XP and Vista. XLPlot accepts ASCII data on a spreadsheet and it
outputs a vector drawing. The primary purpose of XLPlot is to
create a figure rapidly. It is ideal for for use at high school,
as the path from data in one or more spreadsheet columns to the
final figure is short (just a few mouse clicks) and easy to
grasp. It contains basic statistical functions, such as
Student's t-test and linear correlation of two sets of data (two
columns in a spreadsheet). XLPlot has a number of built-in
functions that can be fitted to the data in columns on a
spreadsheet or to a curve in a graph. The user can easily add
fitting functions of his own design." It is a modest piece of
software that does a surprising number of tasks well.

The content on Microwaves101 is intended
to be the following mix: Useful microwave information - 75%,
Humor and assorted foolishness - 20%, Historical stuff - 15%,
The remainder of 5% is stuff we've misplaced... We are here to
help. If you can't get a response on the message board, send a
question directly to the Unknown Editor. In-line content
provided by vendors is intended to be useful technical
information, not cheesy product releases."

Agilent (né Hewlett-Packard)
Application Note 95-1, "S-Parameter Techniques for Faster, More
Accurate Network Design", discusses S-parameter techniques for
designing networks used in amplifiers and oscillators. The basic
theory behind using S-parameters to characterize any two-port
network is presented, and the measurements of s-parameters for a
transistor are summarized. Examples of using S-parameters to
optimize amplifier and oscillator performance are presented and
the optimization of the power gain of a narrow-band amplifier is
used to illustrate the use of S-parameters and the Smith Chart
in network design. This application note is in Adobe Acrobat
(PDF) format and is bundled with QuickTime animations. It is
available for download for all major computing environments.
There is also an interactive JavaTM model that
illustrates basic techniques for using S-parameters in network
design.

An article by David J. Dascher entitled
"Measuring Parasitic Capacitance and Inductance Using TDR" from
the Hewlett-Packard Journal. The article discusses TDR
for transmission lines that have inductive or capacitive loads
(in PDF, so Acrobat Reader or something similar is needed to
view it).

3
September 2013:This
week, students should come to the lab section
on Thursday, September 5 at EITHER 9:00 AM or 2:00
PM. The lab sections on Tuesday, September 3 will not meet, and
students in those sections should attend one of the Thursday
meeting times.

27 August 2013:This week and next week (August 27 and
29, September 3 and 5) there will be no lab experiments.
Instead, come to room ECEE 254 for lectures at the times
indicated as follows.

Students should come to the lab section on EITHER Tuesday,
August 27 at 12:00 PM, or Thursday, August 29 at 9:00 AM. The
lab section at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, August 27 will not meet, and
students in that section should attend one of the other two lab
sections.

The
schedule for the lab sections on September 3 and 5 will be
determined by survey of the class, and posted here when
finalized.

26 August 2013: The course notes
and experiment descriptions are not sold in the bookstore; instead
they are available for download in PDF form here.
The username

ecen_4634

must be used, along with the password
supplied in class. Use only the 2013 version of the notes, and not
earlier ones, as significant changes have been made from earlier
versions. Please do not waste paper needlessly: print the file
only if you need to, and only those pages you really need hard
copies of. Note also that only a few pages are not in black and
white; use color printing only for the few pages that actually
have color. Try to refer to the notes on your computer whenever
possible. Note that use of WiFi and cell phones in the lab room
(ECEE 254A) is prohibited, so I will have hard copies of the lab
descriptions available for use there while you do the experiments.
The PDF file can (of course) be read and printed using the
free Adobe Acrobat
Reader software.